Wanting to cover a few more transects, we sent the Doc Ricketts, our remotely operated vehicle (ROV), down to the ocean floor once more. We spent the morning and early afternoon cruising around and exploring the life 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) below our feet.

After the transects, we collected a few more animals using the ROV’s robotic arms. We brought the animals back to the surface for our colleagues back on land to examine and characterize.

And then, sadly, we pulled the ROV up in the early afternoon, so that we could begin our long journey home.

: The robotic claw on the Doc Ricketts is able to mimic the motions of the pilot’s arm up in the ship and pick up the smallest of creatures to bring back to us from the ocean floor.

It has been a wonderfully exciting and productive cruise. We have learned a lot about the deep-sea community this week and have gathered tons of data that will teach us even more when we evaluate it back on land. We leave behind our Benthic Rover and the deep sea observatory, that will continue to document life in the abyss for us, until we return to collect them in the fall.

And that’s the end (for now)!

— Judit Pungor

One of the many sea cucumbers that we saw populating the ocean floor, in the tube that the Doc Ricketts used to transport it to the surface.

A buoy is attached to many of the instruments we deploy, to help us locate it when we bring it back to the surface. The buoys have not only a large brightly colored flag to provide a visible cue above the waves, but they also carry both a light and radio strobe, both important to indicate where our machines surfaced.

The R/V Western Flyer is a small water-plane area twin hull (SWATH) oceanographic research vessel measuring 35.6 meters long and 16.2 meters wide. It was designed and constructed for MBARI to serve as the support vessel for ROV operations. Her missions include the Monterey Bay as well as extended cruises to Hawaii, Gulf of California and the Pacific Northwest.

ROV Doc Ricketts

ROV Doc Ricketts is MBARI's next generation ROV. The system breaks new ground in providing an integrated unmanned submersible research platform, with many powerful features providing efficient, reliable, and precise sampling and data collection in a wide range of missions.

Long Term Sediment Trap

Sequencing conical sediment traps are programmed to collect sinking particulate matter in sampling cups poisoned with 3.0 mmol HgCl2. In the laboratory, the collected particulate matter is analyzed in duplicate for total and inorganic carbon.

Push cores

A push-core is a clear plastic tube with a rubber handle on one end. Just as its name implies, the push core is pushed down into loose sediment using the ROV's manipulator arm. When the cores are brought back to the surface, scientists typically look for living animals and organic material in the sediments.

Benthic Rover

The Benthic Rover is a mobile physiology lab. In a series of experiments, the rover measures how much oxygen seafloor animals are using. Precise motors lower two 30-centimeters-wide (12-inch) sample chambers into the sediment, where probes record oxygen levels. Two acoustic scanners use ultrasound to look 10 centimeters (4 inches) deep into the sediment for large animals, such as worms.

High Frequency Suction Samplers

This midwater toolsled contains a High Frequency Suction Sampler (HFSS). You can see one of the 12 collection buckets in this image. This sampler acts like a vacuum cleaner sucking up samples and depositing them into one of the 12 buckets.

Free Vehicle Grab Respirometer (FVGR)

Oxygen consumption (a measure of biological activity) of the organisms living in the sediment is measured using a Free Vehicle Grab Respirometer (FVGR) with grabs that retrieve the sediments for faunal examination and chemical analyses.

Camera Mooring

The camera mooring consists of Cannon EOS 5D digital camera mounted on a titanium frame at an angle of 31° from horizontal with the lens approximately two meters above the seafloor. Up to 3500 images can be collected over a period of four months. The camera is housed with a PC104 processor and external memory drive. These components are used to control the camera and store images.

Ken is an open-ocean ecologist with 40 years experience going to sea and studying extreme ecosystems ranging from the deep ocean to Antarctic icebergs. The main thrust of his research is to understand the impact of a changing climate on deep sea and polar ecosystems. On this cruise, he will be coordinating the deployments of autonomous instruments to continue long time-series studies at Station M on the Monterey Deep-Sea Fan at 4,000 meters depth.

Jacob Ellena
Research Technician, MBARI

As lab technician, Jake's responsibility is to make sure everything runs smoothly so samples can be collected at sea and analyzed in the laboratory. He'll handle much of the organizing of the equipment being taken to sea, and will ensure everything works during the cruise. Once ashore he'll take all the samples and analyze them in a variety of ways with the goal of achieving a better understanding of how the ocean works.

Rich has been at MBARI since 2000. Rich has spent time on many types of projects, but mostly writing software for MBARI's autonomous vehicles. On this cruise Rich is responsible for the control system on the Benthic Rover.

Paul specializies in underwater vehicles and instrumentation. On this cruise he'll help prepare, deploy, and recover the drifters, crawlers, and landers being used to study the deep ocean at Station M.

Alana's focus is on developing oceanographic instrumentation. She has worked on several imaging systems, underwater vehicles (both remotely operated and autonomous), and a water sampling system for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). On this cruise she will be deploying three instruments: the Benthic Rover, the time-lapse camera tripod, and Lagrangian sediment traps.

Judit Pungor
Graduate Student
Stanford University

Judit is a graduate student at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. By day, she studies cephalopod visual systems. By night, she helps Ken Smith's lab lift heavy objects. On this cruise, Judit will be working to document the research projects for the cruise logbook.